Who can recur thus to first principles and find from them better light and peace, without carrying the renewing influence into the sphere of the affections? Here the Divine Word has a voice for us—a voice too much neglected because identified either with a perplexing theological system or a shallow sentimentalism. God is love, and he that loveth not knoweth not God. This truth came from Him who made the soul, and knows well its wants. Bring it near to us and feel its renovating power. There seems always indeed to be a peculiar peril in moralizing upon the affections, and they are very apt to be chilled by the precepts that most insist upon their vitality and warmth. But the Christian Gospel is little disposed to waive its imperious claims from fear of the metaphysician or the sentimentalist. It says Love God and the brethren, and bids us make this truth practical. As the years pass, instead of having less affection, we ought to have more. A true life always has more, as it enlarges its experience and its faculty—not indeed more of that superficial sensibility which is the burden of so many moon-struck rhymesters and the great staple of the common romancers, but more of that divine charity, that vital good-will, which holds filial communion with the Father, and, striving to be perfect even as he is perfect, carries the light and warmth of its presence into every sphere of life. In fact, the highest human wisdom is affectionate as it is mature. The novice in thought may be sharp and crabbed, but the sage is tolerant and kind. He who sees the truth in its reality, sees that it is the form which contains and expresses goodness. If there be a kind of intellectual power that is bitter and malicious, it is sure to be only some shape of low cunning or some perversion of the better reason—some perversion that shows Lucifer’s fall, if it shine with something of his light. The Master and they who learned of him were full of love as of wisdom. Such is the plan of God’s moral government based upon the nature of his own being.
The Father calls us to be followers of him as dear children, and in the sober thought of mature years to cherish more than the impulsive affection of childhood. He demands that our whole life-plan should be guided, nay, pervaded with good-will. If there be less sensitiveness upon the surface of the character, there should be a deeper sentiment within. He is ready to help us win the grace, which he commends. Through devout thought, whether of meditation or prayer—through every act which brings us near to himself, whether of self-denying humanity or of common neighborly kindness, he is ready to impart to the soul something of the fulness of his Spirit, and renew our being in its central spring.
We need this influence in our near affinities and remoter relations. The ice gathers about us, and should be melted away. The most intimate ties become dull and indifferent through custom, and the nearest friends, because of their nearness, lose interest as if estranged. In the same Divine fountain we refresh every home feeling and social sympathy. Realizing anew our relation to God, we are ready to see more of his goodness in all things around, and regard every aspect of humanity, as a call upon us to appreciate his love for us by our own for his creatures. The point of view is at once changed, and we look upon our fellow-beings no longer in the spirit of harsh critics, exacting all things and owing nothing, but as ourselves dependants upon Divine favor, and owing mercy even as we have received. Every human tie is in peril, when this sentiment is forgotten. When its force is felt, every sphere of life has a blessing. Home wears a new smile, and its mutual deference repeats the great law of Heaven. Strifes among kindred and acquaintances cease. The sternest censor of the follies and vices of mankind mingles mercy with his judgment, and considers with thoughtful compassion the infirmities at which the cynic scoffs. Because he opens his heart, he does not shut his eyes, but with judgment keen, yet tender and forbearing, in a spirit wise and benign, nay, Christlike, he looks upon the strange drama of human life, and whilst he cannot wholly solve its problem, sees enough of God in the universe and among men to submit the ultimate solution to the Divine Power, and finds a very sure way of helping on the Divine plans by a life of justice, energy and good-will. Who of us does not need more of this spirit, more sense of God’s love to us, as the great source of kind affection to one another?
For want of it, and of the filial faith in which it has its root, we wither up, and our best strength is lost. Nay, our very work languishes—our labor, whatever it may be, loses its zest. There is no man of generous mind, who has not at some time accepted his life-work in a spirit truly religious, feeling that its burdens are to be borne in a Christian temper, and its duties done with reference to exalted aims. But how often the better purpose languishes, and we pursue our toil away from the fountains of true life, separating the spheres which God has joined together, robbing our daily life of the freshness and power, which our youthful zeal possessed without care, and which need only to be truly cared for to be preserved, nay, to grow in vigor. It is not always so with us, but too often; and there are none who do not need renovation in respect to their life-plan and work. Some things we should do, that we have not done—some things, that we have done, should have been left undone. There is much efficacy in a sober and honest review of our personal career, of what we have achieved, suffered, gained, lost, and of what has been our use alike of our successes and disappointments. God has given to us something of his own power of judgment, and we are the better either by the rebuke or the encouragement of the “Ill-done” or the “Well-done,” pronounced by ourselves upon ourselves. More power still comes from bringing all the higher resources of our being upon our labor, refusing to become the serfs of a slavish routine of task-work, and keeping our hours and weeks fresh alike by the faculties that we exert, and the aims to which we look. Happy, indeed, the man, whatever be the sphere of his action, whose being is renewed rather than exhausted by his toil. Only a filial faith and love can insure this blessing. A cheerful temper is much, but not all; and no merely animal spirits can suffice to renovate the mind under so many vicissitudes and disappointments as most lives present. A man’s spirit is the chief fact in determining his spirits, and the spirit can be kept fresh and strong only by communion with the God who gave it. They who take the work of life as given by God in kindness, and as to be done faithfully and cheerfully, filially, keep and enlarge their power. Whatever their sphere, they wait upon the Lord, and they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength—they shall mount up with wings as eagles—they shall run and not be weary—they shall walk and not faint.
Thus following the leadings of Divine Providence, we find the true fountain of life. All things are ever new, and in our faint human experience we are able to know something of the bliss of that Infinite and Omniscient, to whom all things are known—to whom there is no past or future, yet whose is the fulness of an ever-renewing life, the great I Am, from everlasting to everlasting. Existence becomes more serene, yet more earnest; less impassioned, not less affectionate; less impulsive, but far more interesting. There are two kinds of renewal, distant as are earth and heaven. The one comes from the novelty of a constant variety, the other from the freshness of an ever truer life. Just across the sea the exile of Patmos could have found an excellent example to place in contrast with the spirit of renewal which he urged. The Athenian—and he is in this respect more favored with followers than in his Attic refinement—spent his time in seeking for some new thing. Common life was stupid, its business was contemptible and fit only for slaves. Different the spirit, as the lot of this novelty hunter from that of the Christian with his ever renewed mind. The one finds what is new by skimming over surfaces, the other by drawing from inexhaustible depths. The one scatters his forces as he seeks to refresh them, the other concentrates his powers in the very process of renovation. The one yields to a passion for mental dissipation that burns and wastes like a fever, the other follows a law of life, whose pulses beat in ever serener health—nay, beat in ever-renewing vigor, and sound no funeral marches to the grave. In short, the one indulges in a mental distraction that has in itself the principle of exhaustion; the other is nurtured by the Divine aliment which gives a life that is eternal.
Are not our own experience and observation full of illustrations of the truth that has been presented. Are not history and biography constant witnesses of the ever-renovating power of a genuine faith, and love, and work, and also of the fate of worldly passion to exhaust its own springs of enjoyment. How signal an illustration we may take from the destiny of two men of the last century, who, more than any others, moved France and England—the nations to which they spoke. Mirabeau, a man of robust frame and singular native eloquence, was cut down in the very meridian of his day by a disease which was an expressive close and consequence of the fitful fever of his life of passion. His last words, in their gorgeous rhetoric, showed with what opiates he had drugged his soul: “Sprinkle me with perfumes, crown me with flowers, and thus let me sink into the eternal sleep.” Within that very month, a far different death-scene was presented across the British Channel. An old man of nearly four-score years and ten, rests peacefully upon his bed, surrounded by a company of friends, who feel quite as much joy as grief, as they look upon his face and hear his words. Although of frame naturally delicate, and of gifts by no means brilliant, he has moved the hearts of myriads by his appeals, and won a name better than that of founders of empires. The very week previous he had continued his round of labors, and his strength was not abated as he pleaded his Master’s cause. He sank to his rest in God with the words of the anthem,
“I’ll praise my Maker with my breath,”